[texhax] (no subject)

[Herbert Gintis]

At 11:13 AM 6/7/2003 -0400, Stewart C. Russell wrote:
>Herbert Gintis wrote:
>>... the language he wrote it in is a complete mess. ...  the
>>absence of real floating point
>
>you don't want floating point in typesetting software. The tiniest 
>precision difference can make a line break differently, which can make a 
>page throw differently, which can wreck the pagination of a whole book.
         Different users want different things. TeX lacks graphics support. 
When I wrote graphics routines for TeX, I had to import a floating point 
package, and it worked, though it's incredibly clunky to use.
         Try drawing curves, circles, etc. without floating point!
         The power should be in the software, and the user can decide 
whether to take advantage of it, I think.

Herb



Herbert Gintis
Emeritus Professor of Economics, University of 
Massachusetts
External Faculty, Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM
15 Forbes Avenue, Northampton, MA 01060
413-586-7756  (Home Office) 206-984-9873 (Fax)
Recent papers are posted on my <http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~gintis>web site.
Get Game Theory Evolving (Princeton, 2000) at 
<http://www.isbn.nu/0691009430/amazon>Amazon.com.

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